I knew I could not allow the creation
of a hole we’d all fall into inside
your tiny casket, your tiny black hole

needed to be covered up.
I won’t let you go under
the ground. I won’t let you
be covered over by dry dirt.

I won’t let you be
just a nothing, so please
try to whisper your new name in my ear.

***

Tainted Pretty Dark

1.

You had a chance to be human
before he touched you
with his small mind.

You could try to beat that dick off
with a cake beater,
but what would be the result of that?

More blood behind bars?
More sanitary pads inside
an insane asylum?

2.

Now the sky only exists inside
your screwed up head.
Your sky a feathered brain of ass and wing.

Pink speculum coronas the dark,
then pulls out, then rips off another wing.

Nobody else wants you to try
to fly away from this mess.

***

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and red explosions. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications, recently including FLAPPERHOUSE, Ghost Proposal, H_NGM_N, ILK, and Menacing Hedge. She is the author of more than thirteen published poetry chapbooks, most recently including POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press, 2013), RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014) and a collaborative chapbook with Robert Cole, MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015). Another new collaborative chapbook by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain, Dive Back Down, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press later in 2015. Cook’s first full-length poetry book, Horrific Confection was published by BlazeVOX in 2008 and her second full-length poetry book, Malformed Confetti, is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press later in 2015.

Adam Tedesco has worked as a shipbuilder, a meditation instructor, and cultural critic for the now disbanded Maoist Internationalist Movement. He conducts the ConversexInverse interview series and analyzes dreams for the online literary journal Drunk In A Midnight Choir. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Similar:Peaks::, pioneertown, Funhouse, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere.